nothing in here is true

Saturday, February 9, 2008

one of the ways to measure success in blogging is through a site called Technorati. when i was at my last job, LAist, one of my first goals was to get us into the Top 1000 since no other -Ist except Gothamist had cracked that milestone at that point.

to be in the Top 1000 means that out of over 100 million blogs, you are one of the top .001% in regards to popularity and influence.

when we did it, we tried to get to 750, then 666, then 600. i was confident we could do it because this very blog, the busblog, had made it to the low 300s just two months before i joined LAist.

after i got hired at the LA Times in December one of my goals for 2008 was to get not one, but several of our blogs in the Technorati Top 1000. it was an ambitious dream because at the time the LAT didnt even have one blog in the Top 2000, and no newspaper blog had ever been in the Top 100.

today i got an email from Andrew Malcolm (pictured above in the center) announcing that the political blog that he writes with Don Frederick (and some occasional special guests), Top of the Ticket, today made LA Times history. Heres part of his email:

Subj: Pop the Corks!

Two days shy of our eight-month anniversary, Technorati has just this hour elevated Top of the Ticket into the world’s Top 1,000 Blogs !!!

A month ago we were 2224 with a weight in the 900s.

Congrats to everyone. We need a cake or something. (And a blinking star by the blog’s listing on the homepage. :) )

a lot of people told me a lot of things before i started working with the Times. and id be lying if i told you that all of it was positive. but i can tell you this – Andy Malcolm has been an absolute joy to work with. he and i have emailed each other almost every day since even before i officially was hired on, and not only that but he has taken pretty much all of my little tiny bits of advice and done miracles with it.

bro works all day, all night, weekends, wee hours… hes not the slightest bit afraid to experiment in writing styles, subject matters, or marketing directions. when we first met in person we talked for hours and i showed him a few things and he said “every week teach me something new.” my man is 64 years old – not even twentysomethings have asked me to teach them every week, but andy has, and that eagerness to succeed is clearly one of his biggest strengths.

once i showed him Technorati he was obsessed. not just the list, but who was on it and what they were doing. he became, like me, a student of blogs and trends. he was already a veteran journalist, political expert, and fine writer, but now he’s an online force that simply wont be stopped.

added to that his partner Don Frederick in DC, contributer Scott Martelle, and web deputy Diana Swartz (pictured above, right), Top of the Ticket has just begun to rock. can Top of the Ticket hit the Top 500 by the end of the year? duh. can we get there before Summer?